Ethan Singing

Here are two audio only videos I took this evening of Ethan singing. I was putting him to bed, and I started to sing him a song like I do every night, but this time he started singing with me. It melted my heart, he was so sweet about it. He has attempted a couple of notes before but he has never tried to sing a whole song. I think music might be a good way of teaching him to talk, he loves music and playing on the piano, and I was so excited to hear his cute little voice as he tried to sing "you are my sunshine" and "twinkle twinkle little star". I didn't tape it, but we also sang "Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam" which he loved and kept wanting to sing again and again. I think he's so cute. :)

Today I went to a friends home and took a bunch of pictures of her cute children to use as reference pictures for future illustrations/artwork. She was so kind and patient to let me take the pictures, and I am really excited to see how the images turned out. I used my nice camera, which isn't digital, so I'm going to have Costco put them on a cd so that I can then go through them one at a time and determine which ones are keepers and worth printing for reference photos. I'm excited because I have some good ideas for some illustrations. As soon as I get done I will post pictures of the artwork.

This last month Ryan graduated with his MBA, and I'm so proud of him. He was able to do it online which was nice since he was working full time. I don't have any good pictures of the graduation to post, so this one will do.

fun weekend

This last weekend we went to a family reunion for Ryan's mother's side of the family. We accidentally left our camera at home, so I wasn't able to take any fun pictures of the weekend. I saw, though, that Jenni and Margie both posted pictures on their blogs, for anyone wanting to see some fun pics of the weekend. Friday and Saturday were spent re-shingling Ryan's Grandma Nelson's roof, and the workers really worked hard and did a great job. Sunday we went to church with all the family, and Monday was spent playing on the snake river at Ryan's uncle John's home. Ethan was excited when he saw the boat and the jet skiis, and immediately started signing boat and wanting to go play on them, although he didn't enjoy going on them once the motors turned on. Ryan did get him out on a jet ski once, and I got him out on the boat once, but he cried the whole time. Ethan still had a lot of fun running around and eating tons of chips, fruit and soda and playing with all the children. It was a lot of fun to see all the family and we had a ton of fun jet skiing on the river.

He cracks me up.

Just Thoughts

Just a couple of thoughts that do not have any connection, they're rather random actually.

I'm not ready for full on potty training with Ethan. I decided to give it a try, and I've decided I just can't handle it yet. I'll continue to put him on the potty when I change his diaper, just to get him introduced to the idea, but the full on potty training can wait.

I love photoshop and I've been playing around with it, touching up some of my photo's as practice. I've decided, though, that although I love photography, it's best to just take the picture correctly the first time, and basically leave it as it is. Touching up can help, but it's always better when the photo is good from the start. Also, I've decided that I definately like illustration/painting better than photography because I can control everything down to the the tiniest hair. I like having that control and being able to choose where to place things and what colors to use and where each color and value will go.

Ethan's speech therapist mentioned that she thinks Ethan skipped the babbling phase when he was younger, and that he is now going through that phase. He is constantly making noise lately, carrying on these cute conversations of syllables that do not make any sense to anyone but himself, and it is really cute to listen to. He is getting better at mimiking the beginning syllables of words, if you can get him to look at your mouth when you say them. He has difficulty with a lot of syllables, like the long e sound in please, but I'm happy that he is trying.

hold it, hold it!

so, here's my funny story of the day, well other than finding out that ethan had poured his milk into one of my flower pots this morning. Ryan has been home lately, and so I've been able to take advantage of his being home because he gets up early and can watch ethan in the mornings so I can sleep in a little bit. Last night Ethan woke up some time during the night and I couldn't get him to go back to sleep. Finally I asked Ryan to try to get him to sleep and he ended up just sleeping in his room with him. This morning I let Ethan run around in his pj's until finally I decided around 11:00 that he really should get dressed for the day. I normally get him dressed when he wakes up, but I didn't think it would hurt any to let him run around in his pj's this morning. I came into the front room with his clothes and he was standing in the hallway with this funny look on his face. I could tell he was going the bathroom, so I un-zipped his pj's to find that he didn't have a diaper on. I had just assumed that Ryan had changed Ethans diaper this morning when he got up with him, but Ryan informed me that he hadn't changed Ethan's diaper, so that meant that the poor kid had gone all night and up until 11 this morning holding it in until he just couldn't anymore, which probably explains why he was having such a hard time going back to sleep last night. I really thought I had put a diaper on him when I got him out of the tub last night and into his pj's. He has never held it in for so long on purpose, so it is possible that maybe he is getting ready to be potty trained. I had planned to wait until he was around 3, because I had heard it is easier to potty train boys when they are older. I'm not excited to start potty training, so we will just see how things go.